The mission of Voice of Vietnamese Americans is to empower Vietnamese Americans by promoting civic engagement through community organizing and capacity building.
Established in 2009, VVA is currently operating in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, DC, with liaisons in California, and Texas.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Immigration Law Reform - Vietnamese Americans point of view

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-Immigration reform is a defining issue for Asian Americans. However, there is still a lot of education we need to do in order to educate Vietnamese Americans about why immigration reform will impact their lives and their families' lives.

-The Obama administration has made it clear that they will tackle immigration reform next spring, and that they will seriously advance a comprehensive immigration reform bill that will legalize the undocumented and bring them out of the shadows, resolve the family immigration backlogs, resolve the issue of future flow, increase worker protections, and maintain some sort of verification system.

-All of these issues impact all Vietnamese Americans. There are 1.2 million estimated undocumented Asians, and many of them are from Vietnam. In addition, there are over 100,000 Vietnamese Americans waiting abroad to join family here in the US through the family-based immigration system. Finally, any kind of mandatory verification system will impact all 250 million workers in America, whether you are a citizen, legal permanent resident, or undocumented individual. ALL Vietnamese Americans will be impacted by the passage of an immigration reform bill.

-That is why we need to pay attention to the debate, understand the policy parameters of immigration reform bills that are introduced, and make our voices heard. We can do this by joining the Reform IMmigration for America campaign, collecting stories of people impacted by our broken immigrations system, be willing to appear on the radio and TV to talk about our stories and engage in the debate, and help organize other Vietnamese Americans to become involved in this important policy movement.